Beaches of Barksdale 6 On The Bloody Morning After
by Lawndale Stalker
Summary: Excitement at Waffle Awful- and what was that about Sandi?


Thank you for your comments and suggestions. Please Keep them coming. Remember, I want you all to be beta readers for this fic, and tell me what you think I should add, subtract, or change. Thanks. GH  
  
  
  
  
  
1 THE BEACHES of BARKSDALE  
  
by  
  
1.1 GALEN HARDESTY  
  
PART VI  
  
ON THE BLOODY MORNING AFTER  
  
  
  
Daria became aware of a soft bustle of activity around her. She thought she detected morning sunlight through her closed eyelids. She was in a bed, lying on her side... and she was not alone. Her leg was thrown over someone else's leg, and her hand was on someone else's chest. Oh, hell. What had she done? Please let this not be Tom, Dick, or Harry. Or some drunken sailor from the bar. Or... damn! Who could it be that wouldn't be awful?  
  
She heard a whisper, and her bedmate's chest moved in time to the words: "But, Mo-om! She's all over me!" It was Quinn. Huge relief. Daria's world picture reoriented around this information. She gave no sign of awakening.  
  
"Just a little longer, dear. She had a rough night."  
  
Uh-oh. Evil Daria was whispering in her ear now. This was wicked. She really shouldn't. Quinn hadn't done anything awful to her recently. But hey, she was supposed to be having fun.  
  
Daria mumbled a bit, very low. Quinn turned her head toward her, listening. Daria said, "mmhmm, Sandi", then paused a bit, then repeated "Sandi."  
  
Quinn hesitated, whispered "Yeah?"  
  
Daria mumbled some more, very quietly. Quinn moved her head closer to Daria's. Daria mumbled "'member Saturday?"  
  
Daria wished she could see Quinn's face now, but she continued to feign sleep. Moving her lips very close to Quinn's ear, she whispered "Remember, Sandi?"  
  
Quinn whispered, "Yeah?"  
  
Smiling a bit, Daria murmured languidly, "mhmm, let's do it again!" as she stuck her tongue in Quinn's ear and moved her hand up to Quinn's...  
  
"NAAAAAH!!" Quinn vaulted out of bed and began brushing at her chest and ear as if roaches were crawling on her. Then she grabbed a pillow and began whomping Daria with it.  
  
Pretending to be just waking up, Daria cried, "Aah! Hey! Cut it out!" as she rolled off the bed to the floor on the other side, wearing a sleepy, confused, frightened look.  
  
"Quinn! Stop hitting your sister! I thought I asked you to let her sleep!"  
  
"But Mo-oomm! She touched my..." Quinn waved a hand vaguely about her thoracic region. "And then she... Uuhhh!"  
  
Helen looked at Daria, who shook her head and shrugged confusedly, then back to Quinn. "She was asleep, Quinn! Don't be so hypersensitive! After all, she's your sister! Now apologize to her!"  
  
Quinn glared at Daria, who maintained her expression of wounded innocence, then pouted, then said "I'm sorry I hit you with a pillow.", muttering under her breath "I should've used a chair leg."  
  
"Daria, would you like the next turn in the bathroom?" asked Helen.  
  
Daria rubbed her head. "Might as well. Can't sleep now." Daria got up and ambled toward the door that opened onto the balcony, stretching as she went. She was amused to note that Quinn carefully stayed beyond her reach.  
  
  
  
  
  
Daria had hoped to hit the hotel's breakfast bar and load up on honeydew melon and strawberries, but a concensus had formed in favor of one of the local pancake hells. Daria had managed to order some strawberries with a Belgian waffle. Now they were awaiting their orders.  
  
Quinn was describing a ride about a half mile down the strip. "...And there are bungee cords hanging from the towers, and a cage hanging between the bungee cords, and one or two people get in, and they cock it, and it shoots them like five hundred feet in the air! You can hear them screaming a mile away! Like, who in their right mind would get into that?!"  
  
"The giant slingshot? I rode it. Three times. Once each with Harry, Dick, and Tom. I was terrified, but they insisted."  
  
"Gosh, I wonder why they'd do that." Quinn mused, giving Daria a sideways look.  
  
"Beats me. All I did was scream and hang onto them for dear life. You'd think that would be annoying. After I went with Harry, I figured Tom and Dick would have gone together. But maybe they didn't want to be photographed in that cage with each other, or something." Rita and Erin smirked at each other, and at Daria, who sent them a wink. Helen was smiling a little, seemingly in spite of herself.  
  
Quinn looked a teensy bit annoyed. "Jeez, Daria, it sounds like you acted like Brittany all day. You're not secretly a cheerleader, are you?"  
  
"I was just trying to follow your advice, Quinn. Remember, you said I should turn off my brain and be a beach bunny for a few hours. I found I couldn't turn it off, so I settled for acting like you."  
  
"Well, you can't go wrong there, if you get it right."  
  
Helen said "Daria, what were you telling me last night about designing your own telescope?"  
  
"Well, I decided to go with a medium-sized Newtonian reflector because it's the best choice for faint deep-sky objects, and it gives the most performance for the money." Daria started drawing on a paper napkin. "Most of the commercially available reflectors in the ten-to-sixteen inch range are f 4.5s. They give what's called a richest-field view with a 32mm eyepiece. But they have problems with coma, which is a smearing of star images toward the edges of the field. I calculated that an f 5.7 mirror would give me a richest-field view with a 40mm eyepiece, which are as readily available as 32mm. A mirror of that f ratio has almost no coma, and gives me higher magnification for planets and asteroids. So I ordered one custom made."  
  
"Then I designed the focusing system to move up and down the side of the tube instead of in and out at right angles to it, the way it is on every other Newtonian. That lets me keep the bottom end of the eyepiece as close as possible to the diagonal mirror at all times without intruding into the light path, so I can use the smallest possible diagonal, minimizing the obstruction it causes." Daria finished the sketch, passed it to Rita, and started another one. "That necessitates having the diagonal move up and down with the focuser." When the coffee and juice arrived, she was pointing to the diagram and talking about bowlegged spiders eliminating diffraction spikes.  
  
Jake seemed fascinated. Helen was beaming. Rita, Erin, and Quinn were goggling, more or less. Rita asked, "So when will it be ready?"  
  
"There's a five month backlog. The actual work will only take a couple of weeks, maybe a little more for polishing the mirror. After it arrives, as soon as I get it collimated and get familiar with it, I'll call you guys and we can have a star party." Rita was making vaguely agreeable noises when the pancakes started to arrive.  
  
  
  
  
  
Daria looked over at Helen. They were past the dunes and the bays, headed back homeward through piney woods. "Mom, what happened to drive you to play this "My stuff's better than your stuff" game with Rita?"  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"It seems to be very important to you, almost a compulsion. Is it because your father bought her a sports car and bought you a... what was it?"  
  
"A Dodge Dart." Helen made it sound like "dog fart", with an appropriate facial expression.  
  
After a short silence, Daria tried again. "Did it maybe have to do with you getting her hand-me-down clothes? I notice you don't make Quinn wear my hand-me-downs."  
  
Helen stifled a laugh. "Not since she's been old enough to notice, anyway. And your hand-me-down production has been pretty sparse of late."  
  
Daria stayed on track. "Or was it something else? Something that happened when you were very young?"  
  
Traces of bad old memories flickered across Helen's face. "Goodness, Daria, there were a lot of things that happened when I was young. We had the usual fights and arguments, and Rita picked on me because she was bigger, and I did sneaky things to get back at her, and all of that, but I can't remember one particular thing like you're asking about. Do you really think I'm that driven?"  
  
"Well... yeah. Look what just happened. Your mother calls and tells you whatever she told you, and you immediately launch this expedition and... you know. What made you do that?"  
  
Helen fidgeted and looked uncomfortable. "It just occurred to me that it would be a good opportunity for all of us to spend some time together! Does there have to be more to it than that?"  
  
"O-o-o-kay!" Daria thought. "Nice talking with you, Cleopatra." She said "You know, we didn't actually wind up spending much time together. We kind of went our separate ways when we hit the beach. The most time we all spent together was breakfast at Waffle Awful, if we're counting Rita and Erin. Otherwise it would be in the car going to and from."  
  
"Well, that's not so bad, is it? Oh, wait. Withdraw the question."  
  
Daria smirked a little. "It just occurs to me that we could be having this conversation with the car sitting in the driveway, and Dad could turn around and get in on it, and we'd save a lot of gas. For that matter, there's that nice sofa and love seats in the family room. If we're going to do all our family bonding and life-catching-upping down by the sea or in the middle of the forest, why have a family room at all?"  
  
Helen grimaced. "Honestly, Daria, you ask the strangest questions."  
  
Daria smiled Helen a Mona Lisa smile and said nothing.  
  
"Ohhh! I just think that when we all go somewhere different together, do something new as a family, it enhances the experience, makes it easier to talk and share and grow closer to one another. Is that so hard to understand?"  
  
"Not a bit. That's exactly what I was going to do with Jane."  
  
Helen lowered her head, put a hand to her forehead. "How long are you going to beat me over the head with that?"  
  
"All done. I'm just saying that I grasp the concept."  
  
"Does that mean you might consider doing something like that with me someday?"  
  
Daria looked at her mother and smiled a genuine smile. "I'd love to. In fact, we could do exactly that. I'd still like to see those museums. We could even invite whosis and whatserface up front there, if you think we could drag them into a museum without wild horses."  
  
Helen smirked. "Maybe if I told Jake it was an auto show..."  
  
Daria added "And Quinn that it was a fashion show..."  
  
Quinn said, "I heard that."  
  
  
  
After a period of companionable silence, Daria ventured "You know, competing against Rita as a child helped make you what you are today- successful, aggressive, a fierce competitor, driven to excel. Did you ever consider thanking her?"  
  
Helen grimaced. "Honestly, Daria, you ask the strangest questions."  
  
Daria smiled Helen another Mona Lisa smile.  
  
  
  
Coming soon!  
  
THE BEACHES of BARKSDALE  
  
PART VII  
  
HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN, JIGGETY-JOG  
  
(unless I think of a less lame title)  
  
  
  
1.2 Disclaimer  
  
 "Daria" and all related characters are trademarks of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International, inc. The author does not claim copyright to these characters or to anything else in the "Daria" milieu; he does, however, claim copyright to all those parts of this work of fiction which are original to him and not to MTV or to other fanfic authors. This fanfic may be freely copied and distributed provided its contents remain unchanged, provided the author's name and email address are included, and provided that the distributor does not use it for monetary profit. (as if.)  
  
  Galen Hardesty [gehardesty@yahoo.com] 


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